Let’s take a closer look at the first two GeForce GTX 780 based graphics cards. We will talk about their features and functionality, thermal performance, noise levels and overclocking potential. The performance segment will focus on the 2-way SLI speed.

Performance Summary Diagrams

Here is a table with full test results, now we can proceed to our performance summary charts.

The first pair of summary charts helps compare the SLI tandem we built out of two overclocked GeForce GTX 780s against one such card:

The average performance growth across all the games is 44-56% without antialiasing, which is not too much. However, top-end graphics subsystems are meant to run games at maximum visual quality settings, i.e. with antialiasing. And in this case, the 2-way GeForce GTX 780 SLI is 68 to 77% efficient. The SLI scalability is as high as 80 and 90% in Tomb Raider (2013), Total War: SHOGUN 2 – Fall of the Samurai, Battlefield 3 and Sniper Elite V2. Considering the lack of any bottom speed problems, the results are most satisfying.

Next we will compare the 2-way GeForce GTX 780 SLI tandem and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 which are pre-overclocked to the same level. The dual-processor card serves as the baseline in the diagram:

It is only in one test mode in Hitman: Absolution that the GeForce GTX 690 is ahead of the GeForce GTX 780 tandem, just because that game is too CPU-dependent without antialiasing. In the rest of the games the two GeForce GTX 780s are faster than the single GeForce GTX 690, which is quite logical considering their GPUs and pricing.

The last pair of our summary charts compares the dual-processor AMD Radeon HD 7990 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 at increased frequencies. We won’t comment on this comparison since it is not directly related to the topic of this review.